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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25181536">Boys Will Be ...</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred'>msred</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Starting Over [35]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>American (US) Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Married Life, Parenthood, Surprises, little boys</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:27:07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,122</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25181536</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>... well, little boys will do a lot of things, not always with the intent of giving their parents heart attacks, but often with that result.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chris Evans (Actor) &amp; Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor) &amp; Reader, Chris Evans (Actor) &amp; You, Chris Evans (Actor)/Original Female Character(s), Chris Evans (Actor)/Reader, Chris Evans (Actor)/You</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Starting Over [35]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1423663</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Boys Will Be ...</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23931442">All the Stars in the Sky</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/msred/pseuds/msred">msred</a>.
        </li>

    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>66 months together, 49 months married, 11 months post-adoption (July, Year 7)</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>I heard Chris come through the front door and closed my laptop quickly, leaning forward to set it gently on the coffee table. I’d spent weeks meticulously planning a trip to Disney for Brody’s first </span>
  <em>
    <span>Gotcha Day </span>
  </em>
  <span>anniversary, but it wasn’t a surprise just for him. Chris had been out of town from right after Memorial Day to July third and had therefore missed both his birthday and mine, as well as our fourth wedding anniversary, and I’d decided I’d surprise both of my boys with a weeklong trip to Orlando, heavy on the Disney, obviously, to celebrate our family (after convincing Chris that a family vacation just wasn’t going to work out that summer, between him working out of town all of June and Brody deciding that he wanted to join the summer soccer league that some of his friends were a part of). Transportation had been arranged, the Magic Passes were hidden in a back corner of my closet in the middle of a stack of neatly folded sweaters that hadn’t been touched since April, and Chris’s manager had been informed so that she could make sure to keep that week clear for him (without his knowledge); the last thing I needed was for him to catch me making a vacation to-do list and packing checklist, ruining the surprise, with only a couple weeks to go. The evidence of my covert operation hidden, I sat back against the couch cushions and trained my eyes on the doorway he would be walking through at any moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seconds later, there he was, grinning as he crossed the room toward me. “Hey babe.” He stopped just in front of the arm of the couch and leaned down to kiss the top of my head. “How’s your day going?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Good." I tilted my head back to smile up at him as he stood back up and slipped his hand under my hair to curl around the back of my neck, rubbing small circles there with his thumb. My day had been quite interesting so far, too, bit that little tidbit could wait.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“How was the sleepover?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The previous night had been only the second time Brody had spent the night away from us with anyone not directly related to Chris. We’d been on pins and needles the whole night the first time, not because we didn’t trust the family he was with, but because the first time he’d tried to spend the night away from us had been kind of a disaster. We’d planned a sleepover with his cousins at Carly’s house one night not too long after the adoption had been finalized, and we’d ended up driving over in our pajamas to pick him up because less than an hour after going to sleep he’d woken screaming and thrashing from a nightmare. For the next week or so he refused to be anywhere that he couldn’t see, or preferably touch, at least one of us, and he tried his damndest to keep us both within his reach. After getting the okay from his therapist, we’d even kept him home from school for a week, Chris staying home with him and helping him work through the make-up packets that I picked up from his incredibly understanding teacher each day on my way home from work. It was about two months before we tried the sleepover thing again, all the grandkids staying at Lisa’s one night (at her very adamant insistence) while all the grown children and significant others shared a group date night in Boston. We had a hotel room in the city, just like Scott and the girls, but we also both stayed dead sober for the entire night just in case we ended up having to drop everything and drive back to Sudbury on short notice. Everything had worked out fine that time, but it was many family sleepovers and several more months before we dared try it with anyone other than Chris’s mom or sisters. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The first time he’d stayed over with his friend Austin, after the barbecue we’d hosted for the 4th of July just a few weeks earlier, had gone completely without incident, though. So when Austin had slept over at our house the previous weekend and the boys ambushed the three of us when Valerie came to pick up her son, asking if they could have another sleepover at Austin’s, we didn’t have too hard a time saying yes once Valerie had consented. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I looked up at Chris, quiet for a second, pursing my lips to blow out a heavy breath between them and squinting a little as if I had to think about his question. Finally I smirked, “Why don’t you ask your son?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh oh.” His eyes grew wide for a second, then he narrowed them at me. “My son, huh?” He sighed, “What did he do?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Have a seat.” I scooted a little toward the center of the couch, leaving just enough room for Chris to sit between me and the arm, and patted the newly vacant space. “You’ll see.” I leaned forward a little so I wouldn’t be yelling directly up at him and called toward the hall, “Brody! Daddy’s home!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris dropped into the space I’d made for him, his legs stretching long in front of him and one arm coming up to drop along the back of the couch as he leaned back into the cushions. “Just how worried should I be?” I only smirked and nodded a little toward the hall, where we could hear Brody’s footsteps, first clip-clopping down the stairs then moving a little more quickly and smoothly toward us down the hall. Chris turned then, angling his upper body toward the wide doorway that Brody would be coming through and letting his arm slide off the back of the couch. When his hand landed on the cushion between us he slid it onto my knee, where his thumb tapped out a nervous, erratic rhythm.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Brody came barrelling into the room, practically launching himself at Chris and not stopping until he was between Chris’s legs, his arms wrapping tightly around his waist and his face pressing into Chris’s chest. At one point we’d started to worry about the fact that he seemed so much more clingy, more attached to us, than many kids his age, most of them starting the process of pulling away from their parents a bit in favor of independence. On the one hand, we both adored having such a loving, cuddly, affectionate little boy. On the other hand, we didn’t want to encourage any delays in his development. We’d asked his therapist after a session a few months earlier if she saw any problems with him still being so physically clingy with Chris and me, and she’d assured us that it was to be expected, considering how he’d lost both of his birth parents and spent some time in a neglectful foster home. She said that she wasn’t seeing any red flags, and as long as he was showing appropriate development socially (we saw no problems there) and academically (if anything he was ahead of the majority of his classmates - most likely the result of having a teacher for a mom and a man who had never stopped looking for new things to learn for a dad), then we shouldn’t worry if he stayed a Mommy and Daddy’s boy a little longer than other kids. We took that to heart and cherished - and reciprocated - every hug, every snuggle, every </span>
  <em>
    <span>I wanna hold your hand</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Brody tilted his head back until his chin rested between Chris’s ribs right in the center of his chest. “Hey Daddy,” he grinned. “I missed you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris’s eyes were wide as he looked over at me, wrapping one arm around Brody’s back to pull him tighter for a hug, our little boy’s face pressing back into his dad’s shirt, and running the other hand slowly over Brody’s freshly buzzed hair. “Hey bud.” He spoke slowly, “I missed you too. What, uh,” his hand stayed on the back of Brody’s head and with the other hand, his arm still wrapped around Brody’s back, he tugged at Brody’s hip until he stepped back. Brody looked up at him, still smiling, the picture of innocence, and Chris rubbed his fingertips lightly over the back of Brody’s skull, “What happened here?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If Brody thought there was any chance that Chris was unhappy with the sudden change in his appearance, it didn’t show. His grin only widened and he told his dad proudly, “Cut my hair!"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris nodded slowly as his hand moved from the back of Brody’s head to his shoulder. “I see that.” He looked over at me for a second, but I tried not to let my face show any emotion, “Mommy didn’t tell me she was taking you to get your hair cut.” And it’s not like he would have expected me to ask permission or anything like that, but we just </span>
  <em>
    <span>told </span>
  </em>
  <span>each other things, especially when it came to our son.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She didn’t.” Brody’s hands had slid down to rest on Chris’s thighs and he kind of patted the tops of Chris’s legs, one hand rising and falling at a time, as he talked. “Austin’s brother cut it!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris’s head tilted a little to one side. “Austin’s brother, huh?” He looked over at me again, and that time I let my lips start to pull up on one side. “How did, uh,” he cleared his throat, “how did that happen?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“With their daddy’s clippers,” Brody told him matter-of-factly, starting to bounce a little on his toes, wide, proud grin still in place. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Huh.” Chris brought his hand down from Brody’s shoulder so that both hands rested lightly on his narrow hips. “Where were Austin’s Mommy and Daddy?” I could tell he was working to keep his voice casual, light, calm. I didn’t think he was angry, but he was certainly confused, maybe even concerned. If I had to guess, I would venture that it had much less to do with the unplanned haircut and almost everything to do with the fact that we were both still anxious, at least a little bit, about sending Brody away overnight at all, and having him come home looking very different from when he’d left certainly didn’t do anything to appease that worry.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Brody shrugged a little. “His daddy went away for work like you do sometimes and his mommy was with the man.” He clearly had no idea how his words were going to affect Chris, because as soon as he’d finished speaking his eyes were on one of his hands, his index finger tracing lightly over the subtle plaid pattern on the dress slacks Chris had worn for the meeting in Boston that he’d just gotten home from.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris, on the other hand, was far less calm and collected. His head whipped around until he stared at me, wide-eyed and questioning, and it was all I could do to hold my breath long enough not to completely dissolve into hysterics. So far the ‘big reveal’ was going exactly as I’d hoped it would (better, actually, because I was expecting Brody’s new haircut to be the only shock of the day, I hadn’t considered </span>
  <em>
    <span>how </span>
  </em>
  <span>he might tell his story, creating even more confusion in the process). And here’s the thing, I’m not a mean-spirited person. At all. And god knows Chris isn’t. But Chris </span>
  <em>
    <span>is </span>
  </em>
  <span> a jokester, a prankster, even. And to get to be the one in the know, for once, the one holding all the cards while he was completely in the dark and growing more confused by the second? Considering I knew how this story ended, I was enjoying myself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Realizing he wasn’t going to get anything from me, Chris turned just as quickly back to Brody. “She was with the </span>
  <em>
    <span>man</span>
  </em>
  <span>?” Now, Chris is anything but a prude, that much should be clear not only to anyone who’s met him but to anyone who’s seen him in even a single interview. But he’d definitely started to see things in a slightly new perspective since we’d become parents, and sending our (still somewhat traumatized) son to spend the night with a friend only for that friend’s mom to disappear with some strange man was not at all what we’d signed up for when we’d agreed to the sleepover.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Brody finally looked back up, having apparently reached an acceptable stopping point in his tracing of the squares outlined on Chris’s pants, “the man who came here when </span>
  <em>
    <span>you </span>
  </em>
  <span>were gone.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris turned to me again, slower that time, and his face was less shocked and more … well, not accusatory, but certainly on the uneasy side of confusion. A light flush was starting to creep up his neck. I just lifted my eyebrows and pulled my bottom lip between my teeth, allowing the corners of my mouth to turn up just slightly. “A man came here when I was gone?” It was clear that he was still talking to Brody, but he looked at me as he spoke, turning back to Brody only once he’d finished.  Brody nodded, his little face still calm and happy. Chris turned back to me, and I could see the conflict in his face - we’d always trusted each other completely and I could tell that the last thing he wanted to do was imply that he’d lost that trust or accuse me of anything, but at the same time, he’d recently spent over a month away from home and his son just told him that </span>
  <em>
    <span>a man </span>
  </em>
  <span>had been in our home at some point during that time. That can’t be what any man wants to hear. I kept my soft smile on my face, hoping, believing, that would be reassurance enough that there was nothing he actually needed to be concerned about, but I was ready to jump in on the off-chance Brody didn’t get things cleared up quickly enough or the situation got worse. After only a second or two Chris turned back to Brody. “A man who isn’t one of your uncles?” He used the term 'uncles' in the loosest possible sense, referring not only to Scott and to Carly's husband and Shanna’s boyfriend, but also to any of the handful of friends who were a part of our lives and came around regularly, always only a phone call away in the case that I needed anything while Chris was away. </span>
</p><p><span>Brody nodded again, “Yeah!” The </span><em><span>duh </span></em><span>was unspoken, but it was very clear in his tone. “You told me to be a good boy for Mommy while you were gone, and Dodger and Millie were stinky, so I gave them a shower in my bathroom,” I watched Chris’s eyes fall closed, his chest and shoulders falling as he blew out a long breath, and he started to nod slowly, likely recalling the incident, “then when I took </span><em><span>my </span></em><span>shower the water wouldn’t go down.” </span><em><span>That </span></em><span>had been an interesting conversation with Chris on the other side of the country.</span><span><br/></span> <span>“Ahhh,” he pulled one hand from Brody’s hip and dropped it onto my knee, squeezing lightly, “the plumber.”</span></p><p>
  <span>Brody waited while Chris leaned over to kiss the side of my head, murmuring a soft </span>
  <em>
    <span>I’m sorry, I’m an idiot and I know better, but please don’t let him tell stories that way anymore </span>
  </em>
  <span>into my ear as he did. I dropped my head and laughed under my breath as he pulled away. “Yeah!” Brody went on once he had Chris’s attention again. “He had to come to Austin’s house to fix their garbage crusher so we couldn’t go to the park.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was like I could literally see it all clicking into place in Chris’s mind - his eyes narrowed, his head bobbed a little, he even clicked his tongue once. “Okay, so Austin’s mommy was in the kitchen with the plumber and she couldn’t take you guys to the park.” Brody nodded. “So you let Austin’s brother cut your hair because you didn’t have anything else to do.” Brody nodded again, his smile a little broader. Clearly, the kid had no shame for what he’d allowed to happen to him. “Alright buddy,” Chris patted his behind once with the hand still resting on his hip then brought that hand back to his own knee, “well, seems like you had an eventful time at your sleepover. You can go back to playing now, I just wanted to see your face and say hi.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Brody shrugged then, just once, “Okay. Love you!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris grinned, a little lopsided, "Love you too bud."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Love you, baby," I added on, winking at him before he waved and took back off toward his room, where the dogs were probably waiting patiently for him to return. A year earlier they'd have been close behind both when he barrelled into the room and then again when he left, but at 12 and 11 years old, respectively, Millie and Dodger were both slowing down quite a bit. They both still loved their boy more than anything, possibly even more than they loved Chris and me, by that point, but playing had gone from fetch and tag in the backyard to Brody reading to them or using them as his audience for his one-man plays. (I wasn't sure any kid had ever wanted to be just like his mom </span>
  <em>
    <span>and</span>
  </em>
  <span> dad more than Brody did at that age, and neither Chris nor I even pretended to be modest about how much we loved that.)</span>
</p><p><span>Chris turned to me as soon as Brody was gone, his brow furrowed. The ‘man’</span> <span>situation had been sufficiently resolved, so I knew something else was bugging him. "And how old is Austin’s brother?" he finally asked.</span></p><p>
  <span>"Andrew's fifteen or sixteen." I knew he'd just finished his sophomore year, because Valerie frequently told me how she was going to stay on him to continue taking honors and advanced classes in English so he would be in my AP class as a senior if it killed her, or him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris hummed and nodded thoughtfully. “So,” he drew out the word a little, “old enough to actually know how to use the clippers without endangering our kid, at least.” I scoffed a little and nodded. He tilted his head a little to one side then and lifted the eyebrow on that side, “Also old enough to know better,” he deadpanned.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh yeah,” I agreed, lowering my eyebrows and nodding, my lips pursed a little sarcastically.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chris sighed and finally reclined back against the back of the couch again, his hand sliding a couple inches up my leg and his fingers digging in a little, just for a second. “Okay,” he turned on his ‘serious dad voice,’ not totally dissimilar from his ‘business voice,’ but with a little more warmth, more sincerity, somehow, “so how much trouble is Little Man in and for how long? And how mad are we at Valerie?” We parented together, as a team, and if I’d suggested anything that he didn’t feel was fair, he would have let me know without hesitation. But in general, I tended to be the stricter of the two of us - possibly because I dealt with teeenagers on a daily basis and saw both the good and the bad of where our boy could be in 10 years, possibly because Chris and I’d had such different childhoods, possibly just because I was a worrier, who knows - so discipline decisions usually started with me, and Chris would talk me down as needed if he felt the suggested punishment didn’t fit the crime. Then, once we were in agreement, we’d present a united front as we laid out to Brody however he was going to make up for whatever he’d done wrong. (And, to be perfectly honest, I was probably only the stricter one in theory, because when it came time to mete out consequences, I was just as susceptible to puppy dog eyes as Chris was. The united front was not only because it felt, to us, like the right way to parent - showing our son that we were on the same team and that he couldn’t play one of us against the other - but because it was necessary to make sure neither of us wimped out.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I shook my head and rolled my eyes a little as I turned to face him, pulling my knee up onto the couch and tucking my foot under my other leg. I leaned sideways against the cushions, my elbow propped on the back of the couch and my head resting in my hand. “Zero. To all of the above.”</span>
</p><p><span>His hand curled a little farther around my thigh until the tips of his pinkie and ring fingers just barely dipped under the hem of my shorts and his thumb traced small circles over the soft skin of my inner thigh. “Zero?”</span><span><br/></span> <span>I lifted one shoulder a little carelessly and hummed an </span><em><span>eh </span></em><span>sound. “He’s a little boy. He did a little boy thing.” And I’d made it very, </span><em><span>very </span></em><span>clear to Chris from the beginning that ‘boys will be boys’ would never be an acceptable excuse for inappropriate or disrespectful behavior - not that he’d even attempted to disagree, feeling just as strongly about it as I did and just nodding through my (completely misdirected) rant - but impromptu DIY haircuts were not at all what I’d had in mind at the time. (If anything, that was the sort of thing I’d expect from a little girl - the number of friends I’d had in elementary school who’d shown up with uneven, hideously short bangs couldn’t be counted on two hands, and I’d probably have done the same thing if I wasn’t always terrified of stepping an inch out of line - but the fact was, he </span><em><span>was </span></em><span>a little boy and he </span><em><span>had</span></em><span> done a ridiculous thing.) “It’s not like he knowingly did something bad,” I went on, “and he’s been hilariously honest about it.”</span></p><p>
  <span>Chris chuckled, his head falling back for a second before he brought it back down again to smile at me. “All true.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And as far as Valerie,” I lifted my head off my hand and flicked my wrist so my hand sort of waved through the air, “he’s not hurt and there’s no permanent damage. We both know it’s impossible to keep an eye on him 24/7, and she had him, </span>
  <em>
    <span>another </span>
  </em>
  <span>him, and a teenaged boy. Hell,” I scoffed and rolled my eyes at myself, “the dog-shower situation happened on my watch. I can’t really be mad at her.” I took a deep breath then and turned away just so I could give him a little bit of side eye, “Andrew’s not my favorite person right now, but oh well. If the holes Valerie was boring into his skull as he apologized when I picked Brody up are any indication, he’s not getting out of this unscathed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughed fully then and tugged on my leg until I turned back toward him. “Also fair points. As long as we </span>
  <em>
    <span>do </span>
  </em>
  <span>make it clear to him that haircuts should only be done by paid professionals. Or maybe you or me, in a pinch.” I nodded emphatically, my eyes wide to make sure he couldn’t possibly doubt just how in agreement I was; I’d come within a hair of having that exact conversation with him as soon as he was buckled into the back seat of the car, but even though I was 99.9% sure Chris would agree with me about it not being discipline-worthy, I still wanted to talking to him before speaking for the both of us. (And, okay, the first thought I had when I saw Brody after Valerie had called to tell me what happened was </span>
  <em>
    <span>God I can’t wait to see Chris’s face when he sees this, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and saying anything to Brody that made him feel remotely like he was being scolded would have resulted in a far less enthusiastic reveal.) He slid his hand down my leg then until it passed over my knee and he cupped my calf so he could pull my leg straight across his lap. Once he had that one where he wanted it, he reached across both of us with his other hand to do the same with my other leg, dragging me closer to him in the process and only stopping when pulling me any farther would have meant sitting me squarely on his lap. “But if he’s not in trouble, why is he </span>
  <em>
    <span>my </span>
  </em>
  <span>son?” His expression was full-on playful then, one eyebrow pulled high on his forehead and a snarky (sexy) smirk tugging at his lips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I played along, scoffing, “Shaving his head because he’s bored and he can’t go out to play?” I reached for his chest, tapping right in the center of it with my index finger on each of the next two words. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Your </span>
  </em>
  <span>son.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He gasped and his hand flew up, covering mine on his chest. “I don’t -” I cut him off with a look that said </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t even try it</span>
  </em>
  <span>. “I’ve never shaved my head because I was </span>
  <em>
    <span>bored</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He shrugged and I sighed, dropping my chin a little and shaking my head at him. Sure, he’d never </span>
  <em>
    <span>said </span>
  </em>
  <span>that was the reason, but with the exception of the one time he’d done it specifically for a role, every head shaving had come in the middle of a hiatus after he’d already been doing nothing but hanging around family for at least a couple months. And for as much as he says that acting doesn’t define him and that his life is more than that, and for as much as I know that’s true, I also know it to be true that he gets restless when he doesn’t have a task or a project to occupy his time. He shaves his head the same way a woman dyes hers a new, random color or chops it all off when she's had the same style for too long and needs to change things up. Still, he looked me square in the eyes like he was daring me to contradict what he was going to say next. "It’s zero maintenance." And okay, I didn't doubt that was also a big part of it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>"Yeah, well," I retorted, "there’s nothing zero maintenance about a seven-year-old, clearly," he laughed and I couldn't help but laugh with him, "but at least I don’t have to take him for a haircut for a while."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He dropped his hand from where it still held mine over his chest to rest beside the other one on my leg, kneading my thigh muscles in his hands. "Gotta say, baby girl, you’re taking this a lot better than I expected."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I shrugged for what felt like the millionth time during the course of our conversation and settled a little deeper into the couch cushions. "There are so many worse things that could happen." And when Valerie had called me that morning, a few hours before I was supposed to pick up Brody, and started the conversation with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Okay-nobody's-hurt-but-something-happened-and-I-wanted-to-tell-you-right-away-and-God-I'm-SO-sorry, </span>
  </em>
  <span>I think every single one of those worse things flashed through my brain. "I mean," I sighed a little wistfully, "I do miss his shiny, silky hair, and it’s gonna suck to have to basically rub my hand over sandpaper for 20 minutes every night for the next several weeks while I read him his bedtime story, but he looks adorable. It’s not worth getting mad over." I watched as a slow, mischievous grin spread across Chris's face and his hands gradually tightened around my leg. I lifted my head from the couch cushion it had just settled into and looked at him a little skeptically. "What?" His grin only grew wider, moving from mischievous to flat-out devious. "Christopher." I used my sternest teacher voice. "What are you thinking?"</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean,” he lifted one shoulder, tilting his head in that direction, even his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth on that side quirking up to match, “zero maintenance sounds pretty nice about now.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Okay, it didn’t take a genius to see where that was going. “Look,” I smiled, ever so sweetly, “it’s your hair, so you do whatever you want.” I worked myself back up to a fully upright position then swung my legs off  his lap and stood just beside his outstretched legs. “But just ask yourself,” my voice was just as sugary sweet as my smile, and the way his eyes had narrowed told me he was waiting for the catch. I stepped over his legs, and once I was at the end of the couch and rounding the end table, I reached so that the fingers of my right hand drifted over his right shoulder as I crossed to stand behind him. When I was directly behind where he still sat, his head tilted up and to one side, just a little, so that he could probably barely see me out of the corner of his eye, I combed the fingers of my left hand through his hair on the back of his head before settling it on his left shoulder. I squeezed both shoulders for a second, then, as I bent until my lips were just beside his ear, let my hands drift down onto his chest. “If you shave your head,” I leaned in even closer, my lips brushing the shell of his ear as I spoke, “what am I gonna have to hold onto,” I flexed my fingers, letting my nails skim over his chest through his dress shirt, “to </span>
  <em>
    <span>pull?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>I closed my lips around his earlobe and tugged, just this side of hard, with my teeth, then let go to kiss his cheek softly and rest my forehead against his temple, all innocence.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I swear I actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>heard </span>
  </em>
  <span>him swallow before clearing his throat heavily. “You know, uh, zero maintenance is overrated.” His head started to move and I pulled away, standing up just until I leaned into the heels of my hands on the back of the couch, just behind his shoulders. By the time I’d stopped moving, so had he, his head tilted all the way back so that he looked straight up at me. “I’ve actually been thinking about growing my hair out.”  He wiggled his eyebrows a couple times then reached up when I started to stand up fully, self-satisfied smirk on my face, and grabbed the back of my neck to pull me down for a slow, deep kiss. </span>
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